Professor Ben Knights, Director of the HEA English Subject CentreDr Gary Day, De Montfort University

I. A. Richardsâ€™ foundational text Practical Criticism, which he describedas â€˜in part â€¦ the record of a piece of field-work in comparativeideologyâ€™, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1929. Itsmethodological and theoretical assumptions constitute the basis of allsubsequent teaching and much critical analysis of literary texts.Practical criticism is still the first mode of encounter with literarytexts for most students, and major traditions of literary analysis andtheory, from New Critical approaches to deconstruction, frompsychological and psychoanalytic approaches to linguistic and reader-response theories, owe conceptual and methodological debts to Richardsâ€™project in Practical Criticism. The book provided a series of models forthe reading of texts, the comprehension of contexts, and the processes ofinterpretation, analysis and composition, which has influenced subsequentcritical practice in profound ways.

This conference will explore the arguments and assumptions, influencesand legacies, reactions against and developments from, and contemporaryversions of and responses to the traditions of critical readingestablished by Richardsâ€™ text. A selection of the papers will be includedin a planned volume marking in 2009 the 80th anniversary of thepublication of Practical Criticism. Proposals are invited for papers of20 minutes duration which may consider, but are not restricted to, thefollowing themes: